What started as a blog recording a six-month sabbatical to Melbourne (and visiting cities in Australia) , Doha, London, and Malta, Turkey...ended up recording my own personal views of aging as I travel through my aging process.
See complementary blog that summarizes issues on aging: http://iage-marius.blogspot.com/

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Darkness

I am a city guy. I realized this when in my second visit to
Beijing, I went off on my own without even a worry or a care. I could hardly
pronounce my hotel correctly, but I felt sure that I will get by, because it is
a city. Cash is the oxygen line that feeds you in any pool of humanity. So, back to the present, when
I was offered to stay another night at Cape Tribulation one of the most remote places on earth--because of another
mishap with the tour booking (for another story)--I hesitated. I am not
comfortable out of my environment, out of the city.

Cape Tribulation is a headland 68 miles north of Cairns. It
has a funny, foreboding name. It was ofcourse, named by an Englishman, Captain
Cook. In his land grab of 1770 his ship Endeavour was shipwrecked on a reef 12 miles off the coast
of the cape. He was in such a
good mood that he also named the mountain at the tip as Sorrow Mountain. Cape
Tribulation and Sorrow Mountain. Located within the Daintree National Park and
at the edge of the Great barrier reef, both the reef and the forest are now
World Heritage areas. Cape Tribulation survives on this fame through mainly
backpacking tourist. With a population of 101 in the 2006 Census, it really is
a small backcountry resort.

My resort was at one end of the village. A well maintained
resort but with a limited restaurant. So when I went kayaking and the tour
started from another hotel with a fully exposed kitchen and two chefs working,
I knew this is the place to visit for dinner. Walking there later on in the
afternoon was easy. As I got out of my resort, two young brothers from Sydney
stopped and gave me a lift. I should have checked on the mileage, but I had not
spoken with many people lately and I was in a talkative mood. I did not see the
distance nor the terrain traveled in their rented car. But I was not worried.
After a few beers the Sydney brothers headed off to prowl the local scene while
I stayed at the resort to wait for 6pm when (all) restaurants open up for
service. And what a service. The meal was excellent...chicken breast with sun
dried tomato and feta cheese wrapped in proscuito on a bed of spinach,
asparagus and caramelized onions, potatoes with a hollandaise sauce. I savored
the dish, not noticing the sunset. It was 7pm.

Satiated and well pleased with myself for making a good
selection (both the dish and the restaurant) I headed out of the resort. It was
pitch black. With the lingering refraction of light behind me I headed onto the
unpaved dirt road to start walking back to my resort. It was a surprise how
quickly it got dark. That kind of darkness that compels you to put your hand in
front of your face to make sure that you cannot see it.

The sky was overcast and the moon was
not visible. I stopped. I was still happy from my meal. I looked around and I
saw nothing. I looked back and I had only traveled some 30 meters but the glow
of the resort was only faint enough to outline the canopy of the forest
encircling it. I stood still for a few seconds trying to will my eyes to adjust
to the darkness. I looked forward. Nothing. I scuffed my boots against the dirt
track to reassure myself that I was on the track. Looked back again and then
headed forward away from the glimmer. No noise but my breathing.

To be engulfed by darkness is the best way of describing the
total lack of visual clues of where I was. By scuffing the road I knew I was
still on the path. I knew that on both sides there were ditches, in some cases leading
vertically down maybe 10-15 feet into a river or a swamp.

Imagine being in space, with heavy gravity. The canopy of
the trees closing upon me, yet unseen. I continued to walk on the dirt track.
The road seems to undulate. Looking back I saw nothing. I was walking fairly
slowly now. My initial spring in my step gave way to a more cautious stomp. My
ears sensitive to the rustling noises of the forest. Rain drizzling but hardly
touching me. The trees and shrubs get to it first. They are predators for
water.

Then I hear a noise coming closer fast. I turn towards the
noise ahead of me, but it must have bounced off the trees, I turn back and I
see a light coming from behind me. Then a noise, an engine. It is loud and
revving. I look at the expanding light, and then it comes around the corner.
There is one light source, bright as a sun staring at me and coming straight at
me. VROOOMM. What looked like a Triumph Bonneville, a café racing bike, doing
60 miles an hour with the driver hugging the chassis of the bike and skirting
the edge of the track. Five feet
from where I was. VROOOM. I am temporarily blinded by the light and then I hear
another sound following. Another engine, revving, but this time the sound is
more deep and sonorous. Two lights heading towards me, at the same speed as the
bike. They must be racing. A bike and a diesel land cruiser. I feel like a
witness to a non-event.

I see their lights become fainter and then the darkness engulfs
me once more. Although temporary blinded again, my night vision eroded by the
bright lights, I was more elated because I realize that at least there is
traffic on the road. I continue walking into the darkness. It is drizzling
still. Sometimes when I pass a section of the track where the canopy does not
reach over, where there is a creek or a river, I feel the coldness of the rain,
otherwise I hear the rain on the layers of vegetation from more than a hundred
feet up.

I continue scuffing my shoes to ensure that I am on the dirt
track. I hear rustling on the side. I tell myself that it is just the wind. And
then I start thinking of the story of Rip Van Winkle, and the animated version
of the story, where the tree comes alive and attempts to catch him. I laugh it
off. My internal narration does not laugh. It continues to go through the
story. I start burping, anything just to make a sound. I pretend that I am in
charge. I start shouting. Nothing. Not even an echo. I stop dead. I listen and
the only sound I hear is the rustling of the leaves and the creaking of
branches. my breathing is deeper. I still cannot see anything. I check my watch which has a back light.
I have been walking for ten minutes. Hmm, I start wondering how far have I
walked.

(A picture of the track in the morning driving there to pick up the rest of the group )

Another ten minutes pass and no more traffic and I still have
no clue where I am. I am alone in the middle of one of the oldest forests in
the world.Some 260 million years. I start walking briskly. The back light from my watch gives me some
company. I start looking at the time every minute. I start walking faster. I
glance back and up and to the side. Nothing. Then light ahead of me. Initially
I thought that it was the village, but t was moving towards me. Two lights, a
car coming up ahead. This four wheel truck being driven more slowly then the
last one, they pass me and then I see the brake light come on, then the white reverse light. The truck reverses up to me, wind down their window. I can see two dark aboriginal men. “You OK?” The
driver asked. I really wanted to say no please help me, but what came out of my
mouth amazed me “Just heading back to my hotel, thanks for checking. Is it
far?” “About ten minutes walk” the passenger softly responds. “Cheers” and the truck
slowly truck moves away from me.

Why is it indigenous people are not afraid when you are in
trouble. When I arrived in America and persuaded my wife at the time to go for
a walk to the Hoover damn from the village of Boulder, I misread the distance.
Having just came from Malta, where an inch on the map is ten paces, in Las
Vegas an inch was more than 5 miles. Tired, hot and thirsty, having drank our
giant slurpie, we tried to hitch our way back. My wife who was four months
pregnant with our first child at the time was suffering from the heat. I tried
hitching for more than 20 minutes. Nothing. Cars were zooming past us. I was
getting worried. By this time the sun started to go down and although we have only
been in Las Vegas for a few days, we knew that once the sun sets the
temperature drops. Then an old beaten up dark green chevy impala stops. I look
inside the cavernous space of these big American cars, and there in the corner
was an old American Indian man. Long hair, waist coat, dark and craggy complexion.
“Y’all need a lift?” “Yes please”
Yes please I should have gone AHLLELUJA, god be praised…”Yes Please” is
what came out. “I was robbed last week giving a lift “ As we both settled into
the front seat. “I am Maltese,
from Malta” as a way of assuring him that we are safe. He drove us to the bus
station and then disappeared. Indigenous people have always come into my life and
made it better.

So here I was, alone and in darkness again, transported back
to when I first moved to the United States. The contact with the aboriginal men
started me to reminiscence. My life started to flash in front me. As I walked
deeper into the darkness, I reminisced about the past. I thought of all the
changes, all the lost energies, all the trials and tribulations. And then I
become aware of how utterly alone I am in the world. I stopped walking. I
looked up. I could not even see the stars to define my smallness in the
universe. I was simply a dark speck in a dark universe.

I was alone. If I was attacked by an over zealous dingo
there would be no one to inform. No one knew who I was. In the middle of the
night, at 8pm, in a dirt track in one of the oldest forests on earth, thousand of miles from anyone who knows me and could identify me, I become
aware that being able to give up everything is how you can truly release from worry and to live. Being
out of your environment, knowing that you have nothing to hold onto, you are necessarily lonely, and
this is how the journey forward needs to proceed. Most of the time in darkness,
most of the time alone, and most of the time slightly on edge. All the time to know that you have already given up your life in order to live it. This is how I
felt that evening. It took me another 45 minutes to get back to my resort. I
missed my junction but I made it back. Sometimes running, sometimes walking,
never knowing what was around me. Wet and very tired, but I had not felt so
alive in a long time.